Dear reader, this is a challenge. How’s your MySQL prowess? You know about LIMIT: it cuts off the results at the specified number.

mysql&gts; select actor_id from sakila.actor where actor_id % 5 = 0 limit 5;
+----------+
| actor_id |
+----------+
|        5 | 
|       10 | 
|       15 | 
|       20 | 
|       25 | 
+----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

But that query actually accessed 25 rows. What if I want to say “return up to 5 rows, but don’t read any more than 20 rows to find them?”

Right now I’ve got the following:

mysql> select actor_id, @rows
    -> from actor, (select @rows := 0) as x where
    ->    ((@rows := @rows + 1) <= 20)
    ->    and actor_id % 5 = 0 
    -> limit 5;
+----------+-------+
| actor_id | @rows |
+----------+-------+
|        5 | 5     | 
|       10 | 10    | 
|       15 | 15    | 
|       20 | 20    | 
+----------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The …

The other day I was explaining options to someone who wanted to know about archiving data in MySQL. “So,” he said, “I might have to code my app to look for the data in two places?” The disadvantage of this is that his app might be more complex. Another disadvantage is that it might take two queries — if you look for a user in the usual location and it’s not there, you have to look for it elsewhere.

One way to deal with this, as long as the archived data is on the same server, is a UNION.

select user_id from user where user_id = 123
union all
select user_id from user_archive where user_id = 123;

The benefit is that you don’t have to issue two queries. That saves network round trips, and makes your code shorter. But it has a disadvantage, too: you’re still querying the archive table when you don’t …

There is no "first" or "last" aggregate function in SQL. Sometimes you can use MIN() or MAX(), but often that won't work either. There are a couple of ways to solve this vexing non-relational problem.

First, let's be clear: I am posing a very non-relational problem. This is not about the minimum, maximum, top, most, least or any other relationally valid extreme in the group. It's the first or last, in whatever order the rows happen to come. And we all know rows aren't ordered -- in theory. But in practice they are, and sometimes you need the first or last row in a group. This article shows how.